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Did anything happen lately? Let’s see . . .
On Nov. 5, Donald Trump, having risen like a zombie from the political grave and barely survived being well and truly assassinated, decisively defeated Kamala Harris in the US presidential election.
This was more than a loss for the Democrats. It was the overthrow of “our democracy” — a regime that felt so virtuous and scientific that it expected to last forever.
Two days later, the German government collapsed, supposedly over disagreements about the budget but really because the principals couldn’t stand each other.
The German economy is flatlining and, other than quarreling, the political class has no clue what to do about it. Nevertheless, elections will be held early next year.
On Dec. 3, the president of South Korea, locked in a political struggle with the opposition majority in parliament, tried to gain the upper hand by the clever expedient of declaring martial law. His opponents, he insisted, were really a bunch of Commie stooges of Kim Jong-un — and since they were elected officials, it was best to dispense with this democracy thing.
It didn’t work. Within 24 hours, martial law was undeclared by the legislature and the sitting president abruptly found he had a lot of explaining to do.
Hardly democracy
Two days later, the French government collapsed because — you probably guessed this — it failed to come up with a budget that didn’t incite car-burning riots in the streets of Paris.
The French have already had their election. In an unusual twist on democracy, President Emmanuel Macron asked all the losers to form a government and kept the winners out.
Four days later, in another interesting interpretation of how democracy should work, Romania’s Constitutional Court canceled the presidential election because a “far right” populist appeared certain to win.
Rumors abounded about a Russian disinformation operation manipulating opinion in the populist’s favor, carried out on that most potent and persuasive of all platforms, TikTok.
Two days later, Islamist guerrillas swept into Damascus and put an end to the bloody dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. People cheered around the world. Joe Biden climbed out of his comfy couch long enough to take credit for the whole thing and offer “humanitarian relief” money to the new Syrian rulers.
But wait: the group now in charge in Syria, presumed recipient of Biden’s largesse, is on our government’s terror list — its leader has a $10 million bounty on his head.
Does any thread or theme connect these disparate events, other than proximity in time?
The first obvious impression is of tremendous instability. I think this is an accurate take, not just on the surface but in the depths.
The world has crossed an invisible boundary into a new age: everything familiar now appears strange, everything solid is crumbling to pieces.
Ten years ago I wrote: “The clock of history is stuck at one minute to midnight.”
The roar of many sirens we hear today is a warning that midnight has come and gone — it’s one minute past, and history, with all its troubles and triumphs, has us in its grip.
Global conflict
Old relations of power and money, only yesterday self-evident in their legitimacy, suddenly seem false and unnatural, if not absurd.
Venerable institutions that functioned well under the old dispensation are maladapted to the new, and deliver mostly decadence and failure.
Ancient ideals, democracy above all, have become garbled in their meaning, and are in dire need of translation into the altered conditions.
The causes of this transformation are opaque and complex. But one thing is certain: the turbulent events I have listed, like many before and others still to come, are driven by a global conflict between those who wish to cling at any cost to the old ways and those eager to move on.
Nowhere has this twilight struggle been more vicious than here in the US, where the two sides are evenly matched.
In the last four years, reactionary elites led by the Biden administration have conducted an unprecedented campaign to freeze the status quo by destroying that combed-over agent of change — Trump.
Their methods included censorship of the digital platforms, corruption of artificial intelligence, judicial persecution, “debanking” — removing disliked entrepreneurs from the financial system, just because they could — and unleashing the IRS and the regulatory apparatus against critics.
Nothing like this had been seen since the presidency of John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Yet, for all the advantages, the Democrats got clobbered by Trump on Nov. 5.
Now the advantage passes to the other side. The election was only the first act of this drama.
Trump has appointed the persecuted to lead the institutions that persecuted them — people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Jay Bhattacharya. These individuals have every incentive to make public all the unethical and illicit machinations concealed by the organizations they will run.
Welcome to the Washington elites’ 2025 version of the horror movie “Saw” — the screaming will be loud and sincere.
Resisting populists
In Romania, the forces of reaction engineered the opposite outcome. A pretext was invented to keep the populist candidate, Calin Georgescu, from winning the presidency — something Biden lacked the ingenuity to do with Trump.
Georgescu is an unusual populist. He’s a creature of the Romanian and European establishment, having worked, for instance, on “sustainable” economics with the Club of Rome. But he has veered into taboo territory with his public admiration of Vladimir Putin, distrust of NATO and insistence on national sovereignty.
He’s also an eccentric who doubts the truth of the moon landing.
In brief, he’s a weird package. And maybe he would make a terrible president.
But what is the meaning of that slippery word “democracy” when a handful of judges can put aside the wishes of millions of voters? And what does it say about Romania’s mainstream political parties, if the voters are so eager to repudiate them that they will embrace the confusing contradictions of Georgescu?
Russians on TikTok is a frivolous reason to cancel an election. If Romanian reactionaries want to convert democracy into pure inertia, they will need a better excuse — otherwise, they’ll soon be back facing the voters and the possibility of really painful change.
The US and Romania represent the two extremes in the conflict for the future. Sandwiched in between are Germany and France.
The masters of the old order are strong in both nations, but populist parties of the right and left have steadily eaten away at their maneuvering room.
The same shriveled corpses of formerly muscular parties keep rotating in power, intoning the same archaic gibberish that always ends in failure.
Elections are meaningless. It takes ever longer to cobble together a government that will stagger and flounder for a bit then fall apart in record time.
The easy fix is to broaden the political spectrum by sharing power with the populists — Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, say, or France’s National Rally.
But that’s unthinkable. It would endow the “far right“ with legitimacy, which in the elite moral universe equates with a kind of Nazi comeback.
So once again we come to a tricky question about democracy: Why should those who vote for populist parties be, in essence, disenfranchised?
If these parties pose a danger to democracy, they should be banned. If they represent a legitimate opinion the elites don’t like, then the elites should defeat them at the polls.
But once they are allowed to compete, their votes should count no less than the mainstream’s in the allocation of power.
The current game of keep-away, I would think, will be difficult to sustain much longer.
Coup to farce
Now let’s turn our attention to the excitement in South Korea and Syria. Look closely, and you will find an interesting contrast.
The South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, sought to solidify a shaky status quo by the application of violence from above. He sent the military to surround the parliament building and keep the lawmakers out.
This is the sort of thing people accuse Trump of wanting to do. Yet even in the South Korean context, with a much weaker tradition of democratic institutions, the whole thing had a charmingly forlorn, old-fashioned feel.
Protesters overwhelmed the soldiers. Parliamentarians trooped into the building and voted down martial law.
Not a shot was fired. Democracy, in South Korea, was strong enough to flip the script — from coup to farce.
The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham guerrillas that took over Damascus, similarly, encountered almost no resistance in seizing power through violence from below.
The brutal dynasty of the Assads, father and son, ended when its enforcers took off their uniforms and melted into the population.
The status quo disintegrated overnight — and the Syrian people breathed their first gulp of freedom in over 50 years.
How long it lasts will depend on their recently installed Islamist rulers.
The difference between Seoul and Damascus was telling. History is on the move in a specific direction. Events erupt with volcanic force from below.
The ruling elites, hierarchs and reactionaries desperately wield weakened institutions to retain their hold on society.
Sometimes, as in Romania, they gain an uneasy victory. More often, as elsewhere, they are battered and swept off by the tide.
We have broken out of a period of paralysis and are now venturing into the unknown. Nothing is given or predetermined. The flow of events, propelled by the collision between the present and the past, seemingly favors heightened democratic freedom but also a nihilistic barbarism.
The new age has yet to earn its name.
Historical importance
Meanwhile, one last recent event offers reason for hope.
On Dec. 7, a reborn Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris opened its doors to the public once again after a devastating 2019 fire that nearly gutted that magnificent structure.
The mighty of the earth attended the opening ceremonies, with predictably bizarre interactions. Trump and Macron arm-wrestled for a long and awkward minute. Jill Biden appeared to make googly eyes at Trump.
Fortunately, none of that mattered.
The resurrection of Notre-Dame is a triumph of the spirit. Here is an ancient monument ushered with loving care into our turbulent times. Here is a jewel of Gothic Christianity that still sparkles in the digital age.
Beyond the powerful politicians and the soaring music, Catholic aspirations and French pride, we beheld a glorious piece of the old ancestral culture shining like a beacon to the new. History, we should always remember, gives more than it takes away.